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A Makeover of a Romance

It was the breakup that shocked legions of fans. She was the image of perfection dressed in Pepto-Bismol pink, with a dozen movie credits under her Size 2 belt, several best-selling advice books and a line of accessories that bore her name.

He was her dashing playmate in short shorts, with a washboard stomach, a killer smile and a pampered life of tennis, surfing and roller skating.

Now, after a heart-wrenching, two-year separation -- for the record, it was her idea -- Ken and Barbie are headed for a romantic reunion, according to their handlers. Ken's new attraction? A makeover, set to be unveiled today at a news conference in Manhattan, that finds him sporting a more rugged jaw line, wearing cargo pants and listening to Norah Jones.

Like a desperate publicist trying to revive the moribund career of a Hollywood star, Barbie's manufacturer, Mattel, is pulling out all the stops to put her back on her feet. For nearly 50 years, Barbie has been at the heart of Mattel's success, but now the very qualities that long drew girls to her -- a squeaky-clean image and virtually no electronic bells and whistles -- are turning them off.

Barbie's dream house is in disarray. Sales have plunged, retailers are cutting back on shelf space for her and, for the first time, a competitor has edged her out as the No. 1 fashion doll in the United States.

Bratz, a line of dolls with pouty lips and big heads, manufactured by MGA Entertainment, a privately held company in Van Nuys, Calif., said yesterday that it overtook Barbie in the fashion doll business in the 2005 holiday season -- a remarkable coup for a brand introduced just five years ago. MGA cited data from the NPD Group, a market research firm.

Barbie's midlife crisis holds wide-ranging implications, not just for Mattel, where the buxom doll accounts for 20 percent of sales, but for the entire toy industry. Barbie has long been the best-selling toy brand in the world and retailers ranging from Wal-Mart Stores to CVS devote millions of square feet of space to her wedding dresses, lunch boxes and convertibles.

"It is very much in the industry's best interest to help Mattel revive the brand," said John Barbour, president of Toys "R" Us, whose store in Times Square features a two-story Barbie mansion bigger than the average Starbucks.

Several factors have contributed to Barbie's stumble. Electronics made for children, like Disney's line of MP3 players introduced for 6-year-olds last holiday season, have lured young girls away from traditional dolls at ever younger ages.

Because of Barbie's close ties to fairy tales -- Barbie movies are almost always based on them -- and historically safe fashions, it has come to be viewed as a toy for girls ages 3 to 6, souring older girls on the brand.

Barbie's troubles have sent shockwaves throughout Mattel, which recently ousted Matthew Bousquette, the president who oversaw the prized brand, and shifted control of Barbie to Neil Friedman and Chuck Scothon, who led the company's highly profitable Fisher-Price brand.

The company, based in El Segundo, Calif., remains the largest toy maker in the world, with perennial best sellers like Elmo, Hot Wheels and the American Girl dolls. But Barbie's performance over the last two years has begun to significantly drag down overall sales.

Barbie's sales slid 12.8 percent over the last year, to $1.2 billion, from $1.4 billion, while Mattel's revenue rose 1.5 percent, to $5.2 billion. Without Barbie, the company's sales would have increased 6.7 percent, according to an analysis by the brokerage firm Harris Nesbit.

"The only thing that is a problem at Mattel is the one thing it cannot afford to be a problem," said Sean P. McGowan, who tracks the toy industry for Harris Nesbitt.

Jim Silver, a longtime toy industry analyst, traces Barbie's troubles back to 1999, with the arrival of teenage celebrities like Britney Spears, whose belly shirts and leggy skirts were quickly adopted by young female fans.

Two years later, MGA Entertainment introduced Bratz, which hit the shelves wearing belly shirts, leggy skirts and a wide variety of other racy fashions that children's doll makers had long viewed as out of bounds. "Bratz saw the trend and really pushed the envelope," Mr. Silver said.

Bratz, which appealed to girls 7 and older, proved that the older girls who had begun to shun Barbie would play with a doll provided it struck the right mix of fashion and attitude, Mr. Silver said.

Mattel's early efforts to battle Bratz flopped. In 2003, it rushed out a new line called Flavas, six hip-hop-style dolls whose urban sensibility appeared to be heavily inspired -- critics said borrowed -- from Bratz. But the product sold poorly and Mattel killed it within a year.

Then there was My Scene, whose exaggerated lips and bulging, makeup-caked eyes once again evoked its new rival and provoked a lawsuit from MGA Entertainment, which accused Mattel of ripping off its designs. (Mattel, in turn, has sued a former employee for purportedly helping MGA develop the Bratz line.) My Scene has had far more success than Flavas, but shows no sign of slowing the Bratz juggernaut.

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Thus the Ken and Barbie drama, which Mattel hopes will reignite interest in the brand. In February 2004, as every 5-year-old knows, Ken and Barbie called it quits. According to Mattel, which says it relies on customer feedback on its Web site to shape the Barbie-Ken narrative, Barbie was wooed away by an Australian surfer named Blaine.

Ken, heartbroken, traveled the world in search of himself, making stops in Europe and the Middle East, dabbling in Buddhism and Catholicism, teaching himself to cook and slowly weaning himself off a beach bum life.

During the news conference this morning, timed to the opening of the American International Toy Fair in New York on Sunday, the new and improved Ken will emerge, restyled by a celebrity primper, Phillip Bloch, who has dressed Pierce Brosnan, Johnny Depp and Sean Combs.

Gone are Ken's outdated swimming trunks and dull T-shirts. Ken's new wardrobe will include cargo pants, a fitted suit with peak lapels and a motorcycle jacket. A facial resculpting, as Mattel calls it -- Ken's first in more than a decade -- will give him a more defined nose and a softer mouth.

Isaac Larian, the chief executive of Bratz's parent company, MGA Entertainment, called the reunion of Barbie and Ken "stupid publicity."

"Ken is not going to save Barbie," he added.

Mr. Larian, who clearly relishes his role as the underdog and is prone to biting criticism of his bigger rival, said in an interview that Barbie "is horrible: the detail is not there; it is not well executed."

"It is time for Barbie to retire," he said. "I mean, even Michael Jordan retired."

Fighting words, to be sure. But Mattel executives are quick to point out that Barbie remains the best-selling brand in the world -- not just for a doll but for any toy. They also noted that Barbie remained the No. 1 fashion doll for all of 2005, even if she was knocked off her pedestal in the fourth quarter.

And sales of Barbie movies like "Barbie of Swan Lake" in 2003 and "Barbie: Fairytopia" in 2005 routinely climb to the No. 1 position on children's direct-to-video movie charts.

Every month, 51 million girls visit the Barbie Web site, making it the top online destination for girls ages 2 to 11. And when it comes to girls, the Barbie bicycle outsells anything made by Huffy or Schwinn.

"The Barbie brand is frighteningly relevant," said Mr. Scothon, the new general manager for girls' toys at Mattel.

For Barbie to succeed, he said, Mattel must move beyond the silent, curvy toy that has been the backbone of the brand since Ruth Handler created the teenage fashion doll in 1959. (Barbie and Ken are named after Ms. Handler's son and daughter.)

"We need to grab back girls' attention on the toy end," Mr. Scothon said. "That doesn't mean the future is not a doll, it may mean the doll needs to do something differently."

One doll that does something differently is Let's Dance Barbie, a line to be introduced this week at Toy Fair and sold in stores in the fall, which uses radio-frequency technology to mimic the movements of the girl playing with it.

Mattel concedes that a new and improved Ken, however dashing and fashionable, and his pending reconciliation with Barbie, however dramatic, is not the solution. But it will give the legions of girls who play with Barbie the kind of new plotline they crave.

In the end, explained a Mattel spokeswoman, male dolls like Ken "have always been accessories to Barbie."

Correction: February 10, 2006, Friday An article in Business Day yesterday about Mattel's efforts to revive sales of the Barbie doll referred incorrectly in some copies to the toy-industry analyst who explained how the company's failure to react to trends contributed to a decline in the doll's popularity. He is Jim Silver. (Chris Byrne is a different toy-industry analyst.) In some copies, the article and the attribution for the Quotation of the Day also misspelled the name of the celebrity stylist who gave the Ken doll a makeover. He is Phillip Bloch, not Philip Block.

The article also included an erroneous reference from the NPD Group, a market research firm, to the performance of Barbie for the fourth quarter of 2005. It was No. 1 in the fashion doll category; Bratz was second. The article also referred imprecisely to Mattel's lawsuit against a former employee. It was not a response to a suit from MGA Entertainment, the maker of Bratz; Mattel sued its former employee before MGA sued Mattel.